Game over

Mark Thow had great kids, a wonderful wife, and a busy social life which revolved round his amateur football team. So why did he hang himself? And why, within three months, were two more of his team-mates found dead?

After the funeral in April of their best friend Mark Thow, 35-year-old Ivor Robertson and Richard Burnside, who was 36, retired to a pub in Inverness to remember the good times. The dark, smoke-filled bar was already heaving with other players, past and present, from the local amateur football team the three men played for, and from other clubs scattered across the Scottish Highlands. Many of the mourners had been rivals of Mark's on the pitch but friends and drinking partners the minute the full-time whistle sounded.

At first, as is often the way with apparently tough Highland men, they necked pints and laughed as if their lives were as carefree as a child's. It's the only coping mechanism they know. So they got drunk and they howled as they recalled memories of Mark. He was some player, they agreed - small but sprightly and full of pep, determination and self-assurance. But he was a referee's nightmare, always questioning decisions and casting doubt on the ref's eyesight or allegiance.

After an anecdote, the laughter would gradually die down and someone would say: 'He was just so full of life' or 'He was the biggest prankster going' or 'A real wee joker', and the players would nod in agreement, then slowly shake their heads in disbelief. Eventually, someone raised the unavoidable, but probably unanswerable, question: why? Mark, who had recently turned 40, seemed to have everything to live for: a good job, three children, and another two from a previous marriage, nice house, and a wonderful wife. He was healthy, had a busy social life, a holiday to look forward to, and there was no history of depression or mental ill-health. Mark was not the sort of person you would expect to take a dog's lead, tie it round his neck, loop it over the bathroom door, and hang himself.

But on Easter Monday, after taking the family pet, Scooby, for a walk, going to the local shop, arranging to meet a friend for a hair of the dog, then having a shower, that's exactly what he did. Sometime around 1pm on 12 April, Mark Thow decided life was no longer worth living.

Just a few minutes after 1pm, his son Jason, who was 14 at the time, burst into the house the way teenagers do, bolted upstairs and found a scene which will haunt him for the rest of his days. He screamed for his mother, who was still outside taking shopping from the car, contacted the emergency services and tried to shield his nine-year-old brother Ryan from the sight in the bathroom.

Jason and his mother released Mark. The police, who were there within three minutes, tried to resuscitate him but it was too late.

'It was devastating,' says Hugh Mackie, a friend and mentor of Mark's. 'He was a laugh-a-minute kind of person. Nothing ever got him down. I just can't believe he never spoke to anyone about his inner thoughts.'

Mark's wife Yvonne does not believe her husband intended to die. 'I knew him better than he knew himself. There's no way on earth he did that on purpose,' she says. Instead, she thinks it was a prank which went tragically wrong.

They'd had an argument on Saturday night. He'd spent the weekend drinking. When he slept in and skipped work on Monday morning, Yvonne told him he was a selfish bastard, then she left to take the children for a haircut. She believes Mark heard her car arriving back in the car park and decided to play a joke to scare her, to remind her that she loved him to death even though he'd gone on a bender at the weekend. 'I think he thought it would be like the movies - that it would take 10 minutes, not 10 seconds,' she says. Now, of course, she blames herself.

Whether intentional or accidental, Mark's death stunned Inverness, and had a profound effect on his team-mates in the close-knit amateur football fraternity. Mark, Ivor and Richard had played together for Glenalbyn, a local pub side, since 1998, hauling it from the fourth to the first division. Such was their passion for the game that they each played for one or two other teams as well and had done for the past 15 years. But it wasn't just on the pitch that they were friends. They lived within walking distance of each other in Hilton, a housing estate on the outskirts of Inverness, and had known each other since primary school. They were, by all accounts, not angels but characters full of wit and charm and banter.

When the talk turned to the nature of Mark's death in the pub after his funeral, Ivor said he could never take his own life. How could anyone do that to their children, their partner, their mum and dad? Richard agreed; he could never commit suicide. Although he was upset about Mark's death, he was also angry with him for what he saw as an ultimately weak and selfish act. He turned to his own father, John, who'd coached Richard and Mark when they played for another local side, and gave him some unexpected words of reassurance.

'Dad,' he said. 'I know I've caused you and Mum a lot of problems over the years, but that is one thing you don't have to worry about, because I would never dream of doing that.'

His father put a comforting arm around him. Thank God, he thought to himself, because he didn't think he or his wife Edna could cope with losing a child by his own hand. They'd already lost their daughter, Sharon, years earlier from cot death. But the idea of one of their sons choosing death didn't bear thinking about.

On Saturday 1 May, less than three weeks after Mark's death, less than three weeks after Ivor Robertson said he could never commit suicide, his partner Pauline returned home with their four-year-old son to find him hanging from a dog's lead behind the bathroom door.

He'd spent the previous evening out with friends, telling them how much he was looking forward to going to Parkhead the next day to watch Celtic win the league.

'He was just his normal easy-going self,' says Robbie Lowe, a friend and team-mate. 'He didn't seem troubled at all. He seemed very lively.'

It is inevitable that in any small community the suicides of two close friends in such a short space of time would spark all kinds of gossip and rumours. Some people began to wonder if Mark and Ivor had been involved in a murky business deal or become mixed up in the city's escalating drugs scene. Others offered more outlandish explanations, suggesting that they must have been brainwashed by a cult or partaken in some bizarre sexual act that had gone too far. But there is no evidence to lend weight to any of these theories.

Like Mark, Ivor seemed to have everything to live for: secure job, nice home, good partner, a young son. But unlike Mark, Ivor had suffered bouts of depression. On top of that, the death of his friend had affected him badly. At his funeral, the sense of shock and disbelief was palpable. 'You were looking around wondering who's going to be next,' says Lowe.

The Highlands have long had Britain's highest suicide rate, with males here three times more likely to take their lives than their counterparts in London. So far this year, there have been 41 suicides in the region - all but a handful of them young or middle-aged men. The number of attempted suicides has also soared. Over one weekend at the beginning of June, 12 out of 20 emergency admissions at Inverness's Raigmore hospital were overdoses.

It was once suggested that the suicide rate was artificially increased by the inclusion of non-residents who travelled north to this beautiful but desolate part of the world to end their lives. This is a factor, but even without counting non-residents, the rate is still disproportionately high.

With suicide, the lingering question is always: why? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Some experts have suggested the death of the old Highland way of life. Not long ago, men here supported their families as farmers or fishermen while women raised the children. But such traditional industries have all but disappeared and it is often women who support their families, working in seasonal service industries, while men struggle to find employment and spend periods on the dole. But this doesn't fully explain the deaths of Mark or Ivor. Although both had experienced spells of unemployment, they were both in secure jobs.

There is also the fact that Highland men are notoriously proud and self-reliant. They would never dream of visiting their GP if they were feeling anxious or lonely. 'I guess it's still seen as a sign of weakness for a man here to talk about emotional stuff or to say I need somebody to give me a helping hand,' says Lowe.

Alcohol and drugs are another major factor. Much of Highland life centres on drink, and there is a well-known local saying about man's relationship with the bottle: you've got an alcohol problem only if you're drinking two bottles of whisky a day instead of one. In addition, drugs, despite official denials, are becoming a massive problem in the area. Others say the rate is due to the fact that the use of firearms and hanging, the most common methods of committing suicide in the Highlands, have a higher 'success' rate. The short days, long winters and grim isolation are other possible contributory factors.

Compounding the problem in these parts is the fact that there is still a huge stigma attached to suicide, partly because the church still has a relatively strong influence. In centuries past, people who committed suicide were buried at night at a crossroads, under piles of stones, or had stakes driven through their hearts to prevent their unquiet spirits from troubling the rest of us. Attitudes have changed, but in the Highlands the issue is still taboo and the notion that suicidal people are to be feared and hated remains. One woman, who lost her husband in March, was told by a bereavement counsellor that because of the nature of his death it would take between six weeks and 18 months before she would be able to look anyone in the eye. And the local council, when asked earlier this year to give funding to the newly formed Suicide Awareness Group, said it would be unable to help because it did not fulfil the necessary criteria. The letter refusing the request stated that 'Gardens in Bloom' was this year's priority, anyway.

'Making Inverness and the Highlands look pretty is deemed more important than trying to prevent more deaths,' says Neil Gillies, who helped set up the new support group. 'The attitude here has always been to avoid talking about suicide. There is a view that if you don't talk about it, it'll go away. There is still a lot of shame and stigma. But we have to challenge that. How many more lives have to be lost before the authorities wake up to the magnitude of the problem?'

Richard Burnside, affectionately known as Titch, His Boldness or Tricky Dicky, was struck numb by the deaths of his two close friends. Luckily, he came from a close, well-adjusted family, who rallied round him and encouraged him to talk.

His father John, a former psychiatric nurse turned publican, was well known around town and, from his first career, experienced in dealing with people who were depressed or had suicidal tendencies. Father and son were so close that people used to joke that they were joined at the hip. To his mother Edna, the kind of feisty, fun-loving woman born to raise boys, he was the apple of her eye. Every day, he'd phone her at least three times. And they'd often chat for more than an hour.

When he was drunk, he got sentimental, apologising to his parents for the trouble he'd caused them and saying he longed for nothing more in life than to have what they had: a soul mate in a rock-solid relationship who was always there for the other.

Although Richard, like Mark, had a reputation as a hard-living practical joker - he was almost swept away once when he decided to swim the River Ness dressed as 'The Man in Black', to deliver a box of Milk Tray to the woman in his life - and he'd survived three serious car crashes, he was also introspective. As well as being the family's speechmaker and comedian, he was its sensitive soul, writing poetry as he pondered love, loss and the meaning of life.

Richard had always been a big drinker, which had got him into trouble with the police. In addition, he'd had long spells of unemployment and a painful relationship break-up. But to the surprise of some of those closest to him, the death of his two friends initially seemed to spur him into getting his life back on track. After five years of drinking at a dangerous level, he decided to quit. He struggled, but managed six weeks with only the occasional shandy. He got a new, well-paid job in construction; his house increased in value, leaving him debt-free; he booked a holiday in Crete for himself and his eight-year-old daughter Kayleigh; and he reached an agreement with his former partner which enabled him to see Kayleigh whenever he wanted.

Richard also asked his father to help him organise a charity football match in memory of Mark and Ivor, and became a crutch for some of the other players who were finding it hard to come to terms with the deaths of their two team-mates. When Michael MacBean, the manager of 'the Glen', said he'd been having suicidal thoughts, it was Richard who talked him out of it. To the outside observer, things had never looked better. 'Isn't Titch doing incredibly well?' everyone said.

But he wasn't. He wasn't doing well at all. It was a mirage. The galvanising momentum that had carried him along had taken him as far as it could. He'd hit a wall. The truth of what he was left with was beginning to settle in. For three months, Richard had tried so hard to convince himself and those around him that he could live a good, worthwhile life without alcohol and without his two friends. But on the morning of Tuesday 3 August, he decided he couldn't.

Edna Burnside knew something was wrong when she hadn't heard from Richard by lunchtime. She phoned him again and again. Around 10 times, she thinks. Maybe more. Then she texted and left messages. At first, she told herself he must've fallen off the wagon and was lying in bed. When she hadn't heard anything by 6pm, she asked her brother to drop by Richard's place on his way home from work to check on him. His back door was unlocked. The lights and heating were on. The packed lunch he'd made that morning remained untouched in the kitchen. And there he was - hanging from the upstairs landing.

What ran through the minds of Edna and John Burnside when they were told the news was something close to nausea mixed with disbelief, despair and deep sorrow. Like Mark and Ivor, Richard left no note, so those left behind have had to fathom their own answers and explanations.

'There's no doubt, he'd been examining his soul,' his father told me recently, 'and I think he felt a bit guilty. He'd been good at school but felt he'd lost his way and let people down. And drink was a big problem. He wanted to give up but I don't think he could, and I think he was worried about Kayleigh growing up and seeing that she had a drunk for a father. And, of course, the deaths of Mark and Ivor hit him bad.'

Sunday 3 October 2004 was a cold but beautiful autumn day in Inverness. At midday, Richard's daughter Kayleigh and Mark's son Ryan led two teams out on to a pitch for a charity football match in memory of the three friends: Clach FC, the local semi-professional team, versus Friends of Mark Thow, Ivor Robertson and Richard Burnside. Before kick-off, the players stood around the centre circle for two minutes, the silence interrupted only by the sound of birdsong. The Friends side - made up of players from various teams including the Glen (though the team itself has been disbanded), Richard's older brother and Mark's oldest son - was thrashed. But the object wasn't to win. It was to remember three fun-loving team-mates, and to raise funds for suicide awareness and support.

In the dark, smoke-filled social club afterwards, hundreds of apparently tough Highland men still necked pints and drams as if there was no tomorrow. But they no longer laughed as if they didn't have a care in the world. Instead, some wiped away tears while others sat in silence, shaking their heads in disbelief.